US – Page County began providing a new service to the public earlier this month by launching a new Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, Web site.
The Web site — www.pagecountygis.com — displays an interactive county map that may be used to obtain information about real estate in the county, including ownership, tax map data, acreage and more.
The site allows a user to search for specific properties by owner name, street address, tax map numbers and other parameters. It also has a number of data layers that can be turned on and off that show additional information on the map. These include roads, railroads, parcel boundaries, magisterial districts, town boundaries, topographical information from the U.S. Geological Survey, aerial imagery, water bodies and FEMA’s 100-year flood plain.
“The county decided to move forward with this initiative as a service to citizens and businesses,” said county GIS Coordinator Amy Ozeki, who demonstrated the new Web site at the board of supervisors work session earlier this month.
Ozeki said that having the data available online will make it easier to obtain basic public information about real estate in the county. She added that it will also benefit the Commissioner of Revenue’s office staff, by reducing the amount of time they have spent helping the public get the same information.
The county began working with Richmond-based engineering consultant Timmons Group in 2006 to convert tax map data to digital form and create the Web site. The contract with Timmons Group cost about $216,000.
Ozeki said additional information will be added to the Web site in the future, including data layers showing parks, public facilities and eventually, zoning districts. The aerial imagery data will also soon be updated with pictures the county purchased last year (the imagery currently available is from 2001).
Now that the site is up and running, Ozeki said the county will also implement a process to keep data current. Doing so, she said, will require the cooperation of various county departments – Commissioner of Revenue, Building and Zoning, etc. – that are involved in land ownership or use changes. Because information displayed on the Web site may not always reflect the most current data, users must acknowledge a disclaimer that the site is for reference only, and should not be used as a legal description.
Similar GIS Web sites are becoming increasingly common services provided by local governments throughout the state. All the counties and cities in the northern Shenandoah Valley have Web sites similar to the one just launched in Page County.
In 2000, Rockingham County became one of the first localities in the region to create a publicly-accessible GIS Web site.
“Ninety-nine percent of the feedback I have gotten has been very positive,” said Stefanie McGuffin, Rockingham’s GIS coordinator.
McGuffin said that Realtors, banks and mortgage companies in particular have found the service useful. As is the hope in Page County, posting public land records online has saved time for both citizens using the service and Rockingham County staff, now that people pay fewer office visits to obtain basic real estate information, McGuffin said.
Soon after the Web site went up, she did hear a concern from a police officer living in the county who was worried that someone would be able to easily find his home by using the county’s GIS Web site.
To accommodate those concerns, McGuffin said the county adopted an “opt-out” policy that allowed landowners to request that their information not be made available online. She also pointed out, however, that names have become increasingly available through other Web sites like whitepages.com, Google Maps and many others.
“As Internet [use] has become more common … I don’t think that people worry about that as much as they used to,” McGuffin said.
